Sort of a Wrap up on Denver Democratic Presidential Convention

by: tessa

Sun Aug 31, 2008 at 12:08:12 PM EDT

There are several ways to attend a convention...any convention.
You can run from one meeting and panel and speech to the next. In Denver, this was literally running, since the venues were rather spread out.

Here was the typical schedule for our crew, masquerading as "Press":

1. 5:30 am - Wake up in a hotel on the far side of Denver
   
2. 6: 30 am - Pick up collaborators on the outer ring of Denver
   
3. 7:30 am - Delegates Breakfast at their hotel on other side of Denver
   
4. 9:30 am - Drive back to central Denver for daily Press Passes to Pepsi Center (Invesco Field on Thursday)
   
5. 10:00 am - Stand in line to show driver's license and secure pass to be shared between all members of crew. Melissa Bailey and Christine Stuart get two Hall passes, allowing them into the Convention Center but not onto the Floor (where the Delegates are seated). MyLeftNutmeg gets one Floor pass, allowing us  to sit with the Delegtion. Trading the pass will take 40 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on how fast you can get through security on the way inside.
   
6. 11:00 am - get daily speaker schedule and establish badge-sharing schedule.
   
7. 11:30 am - Stop in at Preogressive Democrats of America convention, conveniently located down the street from the credentialling hotel. This is the hot and happening parallel convention, and they have delicious bag lunches for us as well as the better t-shirts, pamphlets, and panelists. [Deepest regret of the week: missing Bill Moyers, but I will write up some of the info in another post later this week].
   
8. 1:00 pm - Catch a breath. Try to see what is going on in the streets, protests, marches...Q:Will there be time to attend a Caucus? A:No.
   
9. 2:00 pm - Head towards Pepsi Center for 3 pm gavel. If you have actually attended a Caucus or panel or press conference or speech or rally...you will not only miss the Pledge of Allegiance, but you may actually miss the vote on Wednesday.
   
10. 2:30 pm - Get into Security line
    
11. 2:45 pm - Get through Security - if you made it this far by this time. If you are at this point at 3pm, the line of people trying to get through security will be at least 2 blocks long. The actually processing through secuity with bag checks etc only takes about 5 minutes. Everyone working security is very nice. But scary.
    
12. 3:00 pm - If the heat didn't sock you down (91 degrees without any shade or benches through a campus) you have made it to the Pepsi Center. You are missing the gavel.

Inside the Pepsi Center
It is like any sports event or concert arena. There is a central Lobby (good for people watching, if you sit on the radiators along the far wall) a bank of escalators and stairs to the second level, where the food booths and "skyboxes" are located. The Hallway smells awful, a combination of pizza sauce, fried miniature donuts, and popcorn. People keep stopping suddenly in the middle of the walkway to check their text messages, creating many bottlenecks. The din is enormous since everyone is talking into cellphones to others not in the building.

There were two "Radio Row"s, one along this corridor and one down on the first floor. People are getting interviewed at small tables all ong the edge. The Skyboxes are private entry only, hosted by sponsors for Delegates and VIPs.

The third level holds the nosebleed seats, literally, which seems to be the only place that people in wheelchairs can go to get a view of the stage.

If you hold the Floor Pass, you can sit with the Delegates and plug in for electrical recharging and internet access. If you have a Hall Pass this is as far as you can go. Hence, people watching and badge switching are the main activities for the rest of the day and until closing gavel.

In the outside world, beyond the Bubble, there are still panels and discussions and the threat of riots, while inside the Bubble there are speeches and music, sometimes by the famous, sometimes not. From this point on, until 10 pm, you might as well be watching a television set back at your hotel.

The parties start after the delegates can extricate themselves from the convention, and wend their way to various bars, restaurants and hotels around town. This means that they are out drinking until 1 or 2 am. For some of us...me, for example...that is too late a day if I am waking up again at 5:30 am.

The joy and relief felt and expressed by people of color in the streets, in the meetings, on the buses, in the halls...The hugs and kisses, the warm handshakes, the fistbumps...This was the culmination of a lifetime of marches, meetings, speeches, shouting, negotiating, letters to editors, arguments within committees, hurt feelings, broken bones, smashed families, rebuilding, interference, misunderstandings, and, ultimately, love. This is not to imply that the struggle is over. Far from it. Justice takes a long time. This will be a rough final fight. We have to get Barack Obama elected President of the United States. Statewide, we have to get Jim Himes elected to Congress, and re-elect Joe Courtney, Chris Murphy, Rosa DeLauro, and John Larson. Locally, we have to hold and increase our Democratic State Senators and Representatives. We only have two months to do all that. And afterwards, we have to hold their feet to the fire every single day to ensure a "Progressive" agenda.

The Week That Will Be
As we approach next week's Republican Presidential Convention, so many ironies and fears about:

• Ramadan begins on Monday September 1st this year
  
• Evacuation of New Orleans, quite close to the three year anniversary of Katrina and McCain/Bush horrible disregard of that disaster
  
• Last week's anniversary correlation between Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and the first black presidential candidacy
  
• Nearly a quarter of a century after the Dems have the first woman VP candidate, the GOP finally catches up: Teenage black Republican males, Take Heart and Prepare - You are Next... in 25 years!
  
• Look out for the Bridges in Minneapolis! No matter how much they are now referring to the GOP convention being in "St. Paul", it is really "Minneapolis-St. Paul", and a major span collapsed there rater recently.
  
• Republicans straight out declare that they hate women, by proposing a self-loathing female for VP...one heartbeat away from the top Executive postiion in the USA.